The International Atlantic Salmon Research Board held an Inter-Sessional Meeting this week to consider its future research priorities. At the meeting, the Board agreed the following statement:
‘ Given that the vision of the International Atlantic Salmon Research Board (the Board) is:
‘Factors causing salmon mortality at sea are understood to the level that supports the development of management actions by Parties to reduce mortality to recover, protect and conserve salmon stocks’
and in the context of the climate change emergency, the Board has undertaken a review of its immediate research priorities. In doing so:
The Board has agreed the need to prioritise research into the future prospects for Atlantic salmon populations towards 2050, on both a basin-wide and regional scale, so as to support an adaptive management approach to their protection and conservation into the future.
The top research priorities for the Board in support of this, ranked in order of importance to the Board, are:
- Basin-wide patterns of marine growth and survival of Atlantic salmon.
- Migration of salmon at sea.
- The impact of freshwater environment on mortality occurring at sea.
- Potential interactions between pink salmon and Atlantic salmon.
- Quantification of the mortality of Atlantic salmon caught as bycatch in pelagic and coastal fisheries.
The Board wishes to be informed of, and support in any way it can, research into each of these priority areas. However, the Board has agreed to pursue new research activities into addressing the top ranked area at this time, namely ‘Basin-wide patterns of marine growth and survival of Atlantic salmon’. ‘